Meet the CBITs 2024–25 Postdoctoral Fellows: What’s Next for These Digital Mental Health Researchers

By Izabella Golley – July 17, 2025

As the 2024-25 academic year ends, the Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies (CBITs) congratulates its cohort of postdoctoral fellows, Lara Baez, PhD, Jeremy Eberle, PhD, Arka Ghosh, PhD, Benji Kaveladze, PhD, Adrian Ortega, PhD, and Sachin Pendse, PhD, as they step into the next chapters of their careers. Their work spans across topics including emotional disorders, digital intervention design, health equity, implementation science, and the role of identity and marginalization in shaping mental health experiences. United by a shared goal of improving mental health through innovative, technology-driven approaches, these six promising researchers leveraged the fellowship to build practical skills, explore new research areas, and collaborate with digital health experts.  

The NIMH-funded T32 Postdoctoral Fellowship in Digital Mental Health at CBITs offers a unique, interdisciplinary training experience at the intersection of technology and mental health. Designed to prepare early-career scholars for academic careers, the program brings together fellows from clinical fields such as psychology, psychiatry, and behavioral science, alongside those from human-computer interaction disciplines like computer science, engineering, and design. 

The T32 fellowship program is co-led by CBITs Director David Mohr, PhD, an expert in technology-supported psychological treatment of mental health conditions, and Darren Gergle, PhD, a professor of human-computer interaction with expertise in both quantitative and qualitative methods. With their support, the program brings in fellows whose work combines different fields and reflects the goals of the fellowship. 

Fellow Ortega gained foundational expertise in qualitative research and human-centered design (HCD) through close mentorship from Andrea Graham, PhD, CBITs Co-Director, and collaborators in human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer science, Matt Kay, PhD, and Nabil Alshurafa, PhD. For example, he applied these methods in his first lead-author publication, “Co-designing prediction data visualizations for a digital binge eating intervention,” which used HCD to engage end-users in designing efficient, organized visualizations of intervention prediction data. Reflecting on the experience, Ortega shares, “CBITs was highly influential in my career path. I was able to get foundational skills in human-centered design and more in-depth training in digital intervention design and the treatment of dysregulated eating. These were two areas that I had less experience with before CBITs.” Drawing from these interdisciplinary skills, Ortega will be joining the faculty as a psychologist at Children’s Mercy, to continue using qualitative methods to design and evaluate digital interventions that help teens manage problematic eating behaviors. 

Much like Ortega, Fellow Pendse, shared his gratitude for his time at CBITs, which allowed him to expand his computer science training, develop interventions, and translate research into real-world applications for unique subpopulations. During fellowship, Pendse explored the mental health needs of AI red-teamers, who are tech-strategists who purposefully pretend to be bad actors to uncover harmful content produced by AI models. This bad-faith roleplay often requires the use of strategic psychological manipulation, which can cause mental taxation and burnout. This inspired Pendse to test the acceptability and effectiveness of digital mental health interventions for this uniquely vulnerable group of professionals. “I have really enjoyed learning how to approach translating quantitative/qualitative analyses into impact,” he shared. “This is the sort of experience that only a place like CBITs can provide. Working at CBITs has genuinely been one of the most rewarding and impactful experiences of my entire life, and I am so thankful.” Pendse is thrilled to have secured a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco and will continue to investigate the acceptability and effectiveness of digital interventions.  

CBITs’ fellowship program allows researchers to pursue creative research projects that might not otherwise be possible. For instance, Fellow Kaveladze, in collaboration with CBITs Director of Digital Services Jessica Schleider, PhD, and other leading experts conducted the first and largest “megastudy” evaluating multiple digital single-session interventions (SSIs) for treating depression in adults. Kaveladze crowdsourced new interventions via online submissions with the “Uplift the Web Challenge,” resulting in eleven new SSIs to test simultaneously. “The study took a ton of time,” Kaveladze noted, “so I was definitely grateful for the protected time the postdoc gave me to work on it.” He added, “The funds that the T32 gave me were helpful in conducting the megastudy.” After the fellowship, Kaveladze is eager to continue learning more about the field of digital mental health and “keep asking questions about how to support people’s well-being at scale.” 

Similar to Kaveladze, Fellow Ghosh, spent part of his fellowship exploring a new research area, namely, the barriers young adults with suicidal thoughts and behaviors face when seeking help. Under the mentorship of CBITs Director of Clinical Safety Jonah Meyerhoff, PhD, Ghosh examined attitudes toward a fully automated text messaging-based safety planning intervention. “Our work revealed the tension between young adults’ desire for autonomy and their need for human connection,” he explained, “insights that are essential for designing effective and scalable digital mental health interventions.” Ghosh will continue his postdoctoral training at CBITs this fall, further deepening his work in digital mental health innovation. 

Fellow Eberle will continue his research at CBITs in the coming year. As the fellowship fosters mentorship from CBITs faculty and collaborators across Northwestern University and beyond, Eberle has expanded his research network through multiple projects. For example, he is working with his primary mentor Jessica Schleider and international colleagues to analyze intensive longitudinal data on adolescents’ depression symptoms, reported every few hours through smartphone surveys in their daily lives. He also highlighted two projects with Laura Bringmann, PhD’s lab at the University of Groningen, where he is analyzing how those depression symptoms can help predict changes in adolescents' depression severity over time. Looking ahead, Eberle said he is “excited about several upcoming projects,” particularly his collaboration with Mohr on a study that uses hourly and weekly data on adults’ depression symptoms to reveal important patterns in how those symptoms shift over time. 

While many fellows choose to remain in academia, Fellow Baez is directing her talents in the digital health industry through her role as a research scientist at Fit Minded, a private company focused on the intersection of science and business growth. Baez utilizes the training she gained during her fellowship in qualitative methods to support companies pursuing an evidence base for their products. Reflecting on her time as a fellow, one project stands out. Under the leadership of Mohr, Madhu Reddy, PhD, and Emily Miller, PhD, Baez helped evaluate the efficacy of the IntelliCare Plus app in managing symptoms of depression and anxiety within a perinatal population. Recognizing how difficult it can be for pregnant and postpartum people to find time to participate in digital mental health studies, she worked with CBITs members Charlie Krause (CBITs Director of Research Operations), Zara Mir, Shannon Smith, and Nate Winquist to overcome recruitment challenges. “The team worked super hard to finish the study, and the main outcomes paper is now submitted to a journal–hopefully to be published soon,” she says. “It was rewarding to work with the CBITs team to get the project across the finish line.” 

With the support of the T32 fellowship, these scholars have laid the groundwork for careers that will drive innovation in mental health research and care. The future of digital mental health is in good hands, and the faculty and staff at CBITs can’t wait to see what this outstanding group of scientists pursue next. 

Visit our website for more information about the Postdoctoral T32 Research Fellowship.